Reflections - What’s Benn happening?
GBN's Scottish scribbler, Donald C Stewart, reflects on the Garcia-Benn announcement - a fight between two banned boxers with huge numbers behind them
Bertolt Brecht, the 20th century German playwright, said that there was no such thing as objective truth. There was fact, and that an event may happen, but outside of that fact, everything else was conjecture and opinion.
Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn is a WBC welterweight contest between two of the largest stars in boxing.
That is a fact. The social media following and the amount of people who are going to tune in and watch them fight against each other is likely to be greater than any other fight of the same month. Is it going to do better numbers than AJ-Fury? I doubt it, but it's probably going to do better numbers than Jesse 'Bam' Rodriguez vs. Naoya Inoue.
For the boxing purist, it causes problems. We look at these two individuals, both of whom have had regulatory issues. They have allegedly been caught drug-taking. In the case of Garcia, proven and banned for a period of time. In the case of Benn, certainly banned, but murky and not proven.
Ah! Not proven! The old Scottish legal verdict, about to be removed, where the prosecution has done insufficiently well to prove guilt but there is sufficient doubt to fail to register a not guilty verdict. Limbo. Conor Benn has escaped that and purgatory.
Both have pas fights where they have shown up, with skills that made their fights exciting. There are nevertheless flaws. For Garcia, it was against Rolly Romero, whilst Benn fought a rather strange under-par performance against Regis Prograis recently. So, they will fight each other, and their press conference saw the worst of boxing with the grubbiest of intentions – cash.
Both have been carefully managed to get them to a point where their profile is high. It is difficult to claim they are solely cashing in because there is a genuine world title on the line – the WBC belt. But there is an argument that neither one happens to be, and that is an opinion, the best welterweights on the planet. There is Dana White in separating them on a Zuffa background promoting a Golden Boy show. What happened to not working with the belts and matching the bet with the best?
This is likely to be a train crash, a roller coaster ride, a fight for the ages and ages towards a fight that will take lots of years off both boxers.
God knows what will happen in the ring…
There may even be a rematch clause in each contract, probably nailed on as this could become nasty and prolonged.
The worry is we invest all the money in the hype and there is little delivery at the end of it all. It's hard to believe with both of them at the press conference ready to brawl - a brawl is what ensued.
For the boxing purists we cannot predict the upshot of it all. Will the winner of the one, possibly two, fights between them go on to unify the division under the Zuffa banner?
As Brecht might have said, it will be all opinion at the end of it. What we hope is boxing purist and casual fan gets something that we're talking about in terms of punches thrown, knockdowns landed and a win, that’s not controversial but judges agree with those who watch the fight.
I've got a funny feeling, though, it doesn't matter what happens. It's going to continue to be two dance partners doing a tango, getting in a tangle and weaving their way across a crowded dance floor, taking millions with them and earning a fortune with the rest of us looking on. We shall attempt to fathom what it is that we actually wanted to see and what it is that we actually got.
